My Little Unicorn: Magic is Believing

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"FIM is a BIG MISTAKE to me... it's horrible… so I guess an alternate universe is in order!"

—Dakari-King Mykan

My Little Unicorn: Magic is Believing is... hoo boy.

Written by Dakari-King Mykan, My Little Unicorn is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fanfic In Name Only... with said In Name Only turned Up to Eleven.

As the author has explained at length on fimchan, he absolutely hates FiM and everything to do with it, beyond all reason. Not only that, but he hates the very idea of friendship, which fills him with such rage that he apparently had to write a pony-themed story that's "better." Enter his Alternate Universe, in which the main character, a Winged Unicorn named Lightning, must save the land of Unicornicopia along with the help of his fairy companion, Krysta. They must do this without making friends. At all. Ever. But then they make friends anyway, but it's okay, because they save the day with the power of "believing" (what exactly they have to believe in is never defined) instead of that awful, awful thing called friendship. Yay.

The author quickly made a name for himself for his irrational, fanatical, obsessive hatred of FiM and its defining themes. In his view (and thus, Lightning's), understanding, loyalty, and tolerance are all signs of weakness, and should be avoided at all cost. Mykan also made himself infamous for his hysterically violent, over-the-top reactions toward anyone who dared suggest that his story could be improved in any way. This eventually led to widespread MSTing among the bronies, and Mykan's pulling of the original fic from FF.net. The story was saved for posterity, and is now archived on another site.

An archived copy of the story can be found here. Mykan later reworked the story IN SPACE as My Little Unicorn Star Fleet Magic, which can be found here.

Tropes used in My Little Unicorn: Magic is Believing include:
  • Adult Child: The Grand Ruler. He likes to play hopscotch.
    • To a certain degree the author, who proudly proclaimed to have been inspired by Today's Special and Care Bears, shows he watches even nowadays on Youtube.
  • Alternate Universe: Because the author hated FiM‍'‍s universe too much to use anything from it.
    • Until it crosses over with the FiM universe about three-quarters through. They are even merged into one kingdom at the end.
  • An Aesop: Most chapters end with the Grand Ruler giving an Aesop that is tangentially related to the events of the chapter. Unfortunately the supposed morals are pretty weak and their connection to the main Aesop of "believing" is not very clear.
  • Author Avatar: Lightning.
    • Or Grand Ruler Celesto, whose design is directly lifted from the author's OC cosplay.
    • Titan is theorized to represent the deep seated hatred the author has for FiM.
  • Big Bad: Titan.
  • Big Good: The Grand Ruler.
  • Berserk Button: Friendship. Or FiM in general, really.
  • Black and White Morality: The unicorns are good, Titan is evil. There is no depth to any of the characters.
  • Butt Monkey: Krysta. An entire chapter is dedicated to her getting constantly wet in the fight with a water monster.
  • Calling Your Attacks: "RAINBOW FORCE...!" "WARD SWORD...!" "STAR SHOWER...!"
  • Captain Obvious: Krysta. Upon meeting Rhymey, a character who speaks entirely in rhyme, she remarks "Wow, he sure does love rhyming."
    • Not long after, she wanders into a restaurant and remarks upon how hungry everybody is.
  • Captain Obvious Aesop: One of the many Aesops given out by the Grand Ruler can be summed up as "There are different ways to solve problems."
    • Another one deals with how nightmares are frightening.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Titan. He introduces himself as Emperor of Chaos and Nightmares, but most of the time does nothing besides gloat on his throne.
  • Catch Phrase: Brain has "Satisfactory, most satisfactory."
  • Character Tic: The author apparently cannot type a comment without an ellipsis. Just look at the quote at the top.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The entire premise of the story is based around this.
    • The author has stated in forums that he believes in this concept.
  • Completely Missing the Point: The original story is supposed to teach about the magic of believing and that you don`t need magical artifacts to be a hero. Cut to Lightning defeating monsters with a magical artifact with no explanation as to what "The magic of believing" really is.
  • Crossover: Done with My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic in the later part of the story, thus rather brilliantly defeating the fic's original purpose.
  • Death by Origin Story: As we learn through flashback narration, the case for Lightning's family. In the remake, the same goes for Starla's parents.
  • Deus Ex Machina: The Uniforce. A force of good only unicorns with golden horns can summon to amplify their magic by shouting that they believe. It is never explained what it really is, why only golden horned unicorns can use it and how the Grand Ruler discovered it, but it is the main attack to kill all BigBads.
  • Distress Ball: Given to all of Equestria, when Nightmare Moon and her allies enslave the place without much resistance and take Luna and Celestia hostage. Naturally the Unicornicopians have to come for the rescue.
  • Fix Fic: With the elements the author seeks to change being absolutely everything.
  • Earthshattering Kaboom: What happens to Equestria and Unicornicopia.
  • Expy: Most of the characters. Krysta is named after the main character of Fern Gully, Titan is inspired by Wiseman from Sailor Moon and No-Heart from Care Bears, the Grand Ruler is a male Celestia and Inquirius is inspired by a Zordon-replacement.
    • Heck, take a look at one of the author's YouTube videos, explaining the characters. They are recolors of the original show's cast!
  • Fairy Companion: Krysta for Lightning. Named after a certain other animated fairy.
  • Flanderization: Twilight and friends are reduced to their basic personality traits. For instance, Applejack sounds like Foghorn Leghorn, because in the eyes of the author, talking with a Southern accent is all there is to her.
  • Figure It Out Yourself: The shtick with Inquirius. All she can do is talk in questions, which gets redundant when she starts talking like that even in regular conversation. This sounds familiar somehow...
  • Flat Character: Every single one of Lightning's friends. The first time they show up, everyone gets introduced by showing off their one defining character trait (like Artie being an artist, Rhymey talking in rhymes etc.). After that, they are just generic fighters for the rest of the fic. While everyone has their own set of attacks, personality-wise they are pretty much interchangeable. This gets especially glaring when we get introduced to Dyno and Myte, whose defining character traits are being twins who speak in Mexican slang.
  • Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Everyone in Unicornicopia dresses up in ridiculous Power Rangers bodysuits.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: Titan. He has all power and wants to destroy Unicornicopia just so he can spread chaos and destruction over reality, just because. His dialogue is dripping in clichés and there is nothing unique about his appearance at all. Being Stupid Evil and going with the first Saturday morning cartoon plot his minions come up with doesn't help matters.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: The second half of the story is devoted to heroes and villains trying to find the "Rainbow Stones," which would grant them new powers.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: Dyno and Myte.
  • Green Thumb: Invoked with Buddy Rose to some degree. He is so good, he can even restore dead plants.
  • Hate Fic
  • In Name Only: Up to Eleven
  • Irony: The author wrote this story partly because he thinks FiM is too girly and childish and does not appeal to boys that much. His story contains effeminate characters with girlish interests, fairies, songs from children's shows like Strawberry Shortcake and Today's Special, and fight choreography inspired by Sailor Moon.
  • Magic Knight: Applies to all winged unicorns, especially Rhymey.
  • Mind Screw: The Grand Ruler, Celesto, is a "tri-horned Winged Unicorn." No, not a winged tricorn, a "tri-horned winged unicorn."
  • Monster of the Week: Most chapters deal with the good guys blowing up Titan's recently created monster.
  • MSTing: Writen by the people who also mocked Past Sins.
  • The Multiverse: Unicornicopia is supposedly part of only one of many dimensions in a multiverse, whose worlds the unicorns can visit. But the author repeatedly mixes up the terms planet and dimension to the point where he refers to the planets themselves as other planes of reality.
  • Multiversal Conqueror: Titan, according to the author. See Card-Carrying Villain to realize what he really is.
  • Name's the Same: Thankfully, this Lightning has nothing to do with the other Lightning.
  • Parental Substitute: Grand Ruler for Lightning. Not that their relationship has any significance on the overall plot.
  • Plagiarism: Where to begin? A good start would be the fact that Krysta was, in term of character design, stolen from some fanwork depicting a humanized Fluttershy.
  • The Power of Friendship: Averted. The author is not afraid to proclaim how much he hates the very idea of it.
  • The Power of Hate: Pretty much what gave birth to this story.
  • Recycled in Space: Invoked In Name Only seeing as "My Little Unicorn: Star Fleet Magic" is just "Magic is Believing" with a few extra lines and the Aesop of "believing" cut out.
  • Revenge Fic: As stated by the author:

"I do not like FIM at all... in fact I hate it and wish it were never made... and it makes me angry with all its lies and falsehoods about friendship being magic and the true salvation. Not to mention all the horrid emotional pains it brings me. So…I create this to bash at it."

  • Rhymes on a Dime: The appropriately named "Rhymey" rhymes absolutely everything, even grunts of pain.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: Invoked and averted with the Grand Ruler. While he takes constant care of the ecosystem of Unicornicopia, he does not go into battle when Titan shows up the first time, despite being the only one able to stop him.
    • The author later tried to excuse this by explaining that the Grand Ruler had faith in his prized student, Lightning. Problem is, Lightning can't do magic and the only reason he did not die is that he conveniently discovered he can summon the Uniforce.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Titan, at least till he breaks out from his dimensional prison.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Titan, who killed his father for more power.
  • Shallow Love Interest: Lightning and Starla. They develop a crush on first sight and we never learn much about her other than her interest in astronomy, which is practically forgotten after her introduction.
    • Another example would be Rhymey and Fluttershy in the later half of the story.
  • Shout-Out: Crossing the line to Plagiarism. The scene of the Grand Ruler dancing and doing hopscotch is inspired by a sketch from Today's Special.
  • Show, Don't Tell: One of the story's main problems from a technical standpoint is that the author drives the plot forward more through the means of narrative exposition instead of actual dialogue or interaction between characters. The story also lacks detailed descriptions of fight scenes or settings, making it feel rushed. This is explained by the author as a result of him trying to make every chapter like a summary of a TV episode, instead of working on a good narration.
  • Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: The characters are ponies in the same way as the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but the author makes a big deal out of the fact that they can actually walk on two legs like humans most of the time and use their front hooves like human hands.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Up to Eleven. According to Word of God, the population of Unicornicopia consists mostly of males. While the story has at least four female winged unicorns in it, only Starla (who is mostly there as the Love Interest) and Dementia have any form of slight significance to the overall plot.
  • Stage Magician: Abra-Kadabra.
  • Stellar Name: Starla Shine as well as the creatively named Celesto.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: To the point that every time something blows up, the author uses onomatopoeia like Kabloom and Bang.
  • Sugar Apocalypse: Unicornicopia being destroyed by Discord.
  • Super Sentai: One of the main inspirations for the author. The unicorns fight their enemies like Power Rangers minus the giant robots.
    • Digimon probably also played a major influence in the way the characters fight, as you can compare them to Digimon fighting without their human partners.
  • That Reminds Me of a Song: With the exception of the "Theme Song," all of the songs are there just to be there.
  • Terrible Trio: Titan's three henchponies Mysterious, Dementia, and Rep-Stallion.
  • The Remake: My Little Unicorn: Starfleet Magic is an ongoing remastered version of "My Little Unicorn." Beside minor changes regarding obvious narrative flaws, not much has really changed at all.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Krysta, who decides to follow a strange orb of light with the voice of the bad guy, promising her to tell her where she comes from.
  • Took a Level In Dumbass: Twilight and her friends. When meeting Rhymey during his visit in Equestria, they all mistake him for a crossdressing Fluttershy. Bonus points go to Rarity, who outright states she has no problem that "she" completely transformed herself with magic into a male.
  • Troll Fic: What many bronies think this story is. It isn't.
  • Two Girls to a Team: Krysta and Starla.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Nightmare Moon, who has survived her demise at the end of Elements Of Harmony, and Titan, after being blown up halfway through the story.
  • Unfortunate Implications: By the bucketload, in-universe and from the author. Winged Unicorns are stated to be superior to pegasi and earth ponies. The Grand Ruler later exiles everyone who isn't a Winged Unicorn. The author sees nothing wrong with this.
  • Villain Decay: Discord, god of chaos and in general considered one of the best characters in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, is reduced to a brainwashed monster henchman of Big Bad Titan near the end of the story and loses his reality warping abilities. To add insult to injury, he gets Killed Off for Real by Celestia.
  • Villain Team-Up: Nightmare Moon with Titan's henchmen in order to take over Equestria.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Because he is a Living Shadow, Mysterious gets hurt by standing in any form of light.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Or rather, non-pony. Titan's henchponies are artificial beings and considered not worth rescuing by the heroes when the reality they fought in starts to collapse around them and they are too weak to escape.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: The Grand Ruler dancing to a disco version of "Pop Goes the Weasel" hopscotch-style is hardcore. At least, that's what the author wants us to believe.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: In one chapter, Rep-Stallion is ready to deliver the killing blow towards Lightning, when Titan calls him back for no reason at all. If he had just given him 5 seconds more, the hero would have been dead.
    • Titan later explains that this is because he wants Lighting alive so he can take his powers. Not exactly the smartest plan when Lighting is the only one who is able to defeat him.
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